Classroom Libraries

A number of countries have invested in classroom libraries so that children can have ready access to books and magazines as part of the reading lessons and activities. Exhibit 9.4 presents teachers’ reports about the size and use of classroom libraries in their reading instruction, with the results ordered from high to low by the percentage of students with classroom libraries. There was substantial variation in the results, from a number of countries where almost all students (95-98%) had classroom libraries to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Norway, Sweden, Kuwait, Denmark, and Finland with 31 to 45 percent and Egypt with 14 percent. It is useful to consider the results about classroom libraries together with the results about central school libraries in Exhibit 5.5, because most students in the Nordic countries attend schools with sizable school libraries.

On average, 72 percent of the fourth grade students were in classrooms with libraries, with about one-third (33%) in classrooms with libraries that had 50 books or more. Across the PIRLS countries, teachers reported that 61 percent of the students, on average, were given class time to use the classroom library and 55 percent could borrow books from it.